Richard Dinnis was the manager elected by the wrong people whose catastrophic string of defeats prevented John Carver entering the dark history of Newcastle.

Carver, essentially a coach like Dinnis, lost eight Premier League matches on the bounce near the end of the last campaign whereas Dinnis set the bar at 10 successive top flight losses.

He did it at the beginning of season 1977-78 after player power had forced United to elevate him from first team coach to boss.

Dinnis was a school teacher with little pedigree who arrived as right hand man to Gordon Lee upon the retirement of Joe Harvey.

However when Lee took flight to Everton the players swung behind Dinnis and forced the appointment which was well beyond Richard’s capabilities.

There was no question he was out of his depth, thrown into the English Channel with nought but water wings and told to swim over to France.

The danger of players appointing their manager is that they wield far too much influence afterwards.

As defeat piled upon embarrassing defeat Dinnis was forced to look at the transfer market (there were no windows then). The only trouble was that he had absolutely no contacts and was reduced to asking chairman Lord Westwood, who had cronies in Scotland, to help him sign a player.

There’s a role reversal – a manager ASKING his chairman to sign over his head!

Dinnis was quickly axed of course but inevitably after such a horrendous start United were relegated. A sad and sorry tale of misadventure.